


Reminders

by HLine



Series: Templar Connor [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Aftermath of a Massacre, Gen, Haytham's life sucks, Right after Connor's village is burned, So Ziio's still dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 20:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1401793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HLine/pseuds/HLine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hearing of an attack on a nearby native village, Haytham goes to offer aid and his respects, and definitely not to see if Ziio is alright.</p>
<p>He gets a surprise instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reminders

It had been weeks, Haytham knew, since Ziio's village had burned, and yet the stench of smoke still clung to the survivors.

When they had arrived with a wagon full of medicine and blankets, the natives of the land had been moving around, tending their wounded and building new longhouses. Some sat by fires, blank-eyed and still as the dead while others cooked fish and rabbit on sticks. Distantly, the high-pitched wail of an infant had echoed through the air over the murmur of a hundred voices comforting each other in their grief. Like a stone dropped in a still pond, though, a ripple of silence spread as they were noticed. After what the Virginian militia had done, Haytham was not surprised that they were wary of white men showing up for no apparent reason. Dark, accusing eyes, bruised with grief and exhaustion stared at them distrustfully.

Behind him, he heard the few men he had brought as guards for the medicine shift. Briefly, he felt a stab of relief that he hadn't brought Charles along. As loyal as the young man was, Haytham knew that he was not always the most respectful towards the natives of this land. It was a flaw that he had slowly been trying to iron out of him, but it had been slow going.

With a small gesture, the men behind him stood down. Johnson, the only one of his inner circle he trusted when it came to the Natives, stepped forward and cleared his throat before speaking. 

"Hello," he said, Haytham mentally translating what he was saying, "We heard that your people were recently attacked unjustly by the colonists' militia. We wish to extend our sympathies to you in this difficult time-"

Haytham tuned his friend out; he had helped write the speech, and knew every word and pause. Instead, he turned to look at the crowd that was gathering. His eyes jumped from face to face, looking for the one familiar one that he had known so intimately for too short a time.

"Are you too good to speak to us yourself?"

Haytham kept himself from jumping and tore his eyes away from the crowd to look at the man who had spoken. Johnson slowed and stuttered to a stop, glancing between the two of them. Tall and bronze-skinned like the rest of his tribe, his hair fell in loose tangles around his face. Dark eyes with bruised circles around them glared out at him with a heat that made Haytham wonder what he had done to earn such hatred.

"A thousand pardons," Haytham said quietly, "I did not intend to give that impression. I simply was unsure if there were any of your tribe who still spoke english."

The man narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. Haytham was impressed despite himself. The man's forearms were reddened and blistered in a way that spoke of a man that had tried to save as many as he could despite the danger involved. He had to be in a great deal of pain, but not a flicker of discomfort crossed his face.

"Why. Are. You. Here. White man?" he spat.

"As my associate was saying," Haytham said, gesturing to Johnson, "I heard of the attack on your people-"

The man snarled out a word; Haytham did not need a translation to get the gist of the word's meaning.

Glancing around, he noticed that their little argument was being watched closely by the other members of the tribe. Women and children were being subtly shifted towards the back of the crowd, being replaced by muscular warriors. The small fires that had been surrounded only a few minutes previously popped and spat, abandoned to burn themselves out.

Haytham pressed his lips together tightly and glanced at the man. Every nerve he had was on fire, shouting at him to retreat and let the men he had brought cover him and Johnson while they left.

The man's eyes narrowed, and a flash of recognition jolted down Haytham's spine. The man had Ziio's eyes.

Looking closer, he saw more similar features. High cheekbones. Ziio's narrow chin. Her full lips. Judging by the man's age, he was most likely either a sibling or cousin of some sort.

Breathing in deeply, Haytham took a slow step closer to the man, careful to keep his hands away from his pistol and sword. Still, he felt the crowd tense, ready to fight.

"Four years ago," he murmured, "one of your number shared my heart and my bed. When I heard of what had been done to you, I found that my affections towards her had also extended to her tribe."

The man sneered. "Kanieti:io."

Something in Haytham's chest stirred, growling. Stepping closer to the native man, he cocked his head to one side and raised his eyebrows.

"You know," he said slowly, keeping a tight hold of his anger, "I don't much care for your tone."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Johnson press his hands to his face.

"Oh, you don't, do you?" the man asked, unfolding his arms and curling his hands into fists. "Such a pity that I do not care about what you care for. And it is not Kanieti:io that I scorn, but you."

He punctuated the end of his sentence with a sharp prod to Haytham's chest. Haytham hands were shaking slightly from the effort of keeping himself from unsheathing his hidden blades.

"Oh?" he drawled, "And what, precisely, have I done to draw your scorn upon myself?"

"Enough."

An old woman's voice, creaky but still strong, cut through the tension between the two of them. The man stepped back from Haytham and respectfully inclined his head towards her.

"Clan Mother."

The man's voice was soft with a respect that Haytham would not have thought possible if he wasn't witnessing it right now.

"Otetieni, do not pick fights; not now," the Clan Mother said wearily. It sounded like she had said this several times before, and expected it to stick just as well as it had before. 

The newly-named Otetieni grunted and crossed his arms again, going back to glaring at Haytham but holding his tongue.

The Clan Mother sighed, but seemed to accept his surrender. Giving him one last look from under her eyebrows, she turned to Haytham.

His breath caught. She, too, had Ziio's eyes. More of her family. Haytham was suddenly struck by how little he truly knew about Ziio. He hadn't realized she even had family, though thinking back to her actions during the Braddock Expedition, it was not really a surprise. No one fought so fiercely without a reason.

"Is that medicine you have brought?" she asked.

She was as blunt and straight to the point as Ziio was. Part of him wanted to smile. He ruthlessly squashed it down.

"Yes," he said evenly, "mainly for burns. I felt that that would be the most common injury."

"You felt correctly," she said, her voice as dry as a desert. She turned slightly and nodded to the crowd that was still present. Like racers given the signal to start, they surged forward as a wave. Automatically, Haytham tensed, but they passed around them like water passed around a rock in a river, utterly ignoring him. Clever fingers undid the straps on horses while others grabbed reigns and patted necks, keeping them from bolting. The men gripped their guns, but did not make any moves towards the natives. The camp stirred back to life as bags and jars of medicine were passed back and handed around quickly.

Haytham let a breath out through his nose. It was a small thing, but he was glad to see that there was still life amongst Ziio's people.

"You are looking for Kanieti:io."

Glancing back down in front of him, he studied the Clan Mother. Stoop-shouldered and using a staff to walk, she still, somehow, cut a proud figure.

"She is dead."

Haytham closed his eyes and swallowed, allowing himself to show that emotion.

Ziio was dead. Gone. Memories of their short time together, ones he had boxed up and put away after she walked away from him, spilled from their hiding places. Her eyes and how they crinkled during her rare smiles. Her hair, loosened from its braids and trailing down her back as she poked the fire they lay in front of. How her nose would wrinkle when she slept. 

She had made him so happy, and now she was gone from the world.

Carefully and painstakingly, he swept those memories up and gently placed them back in the boxes that they had been hidden in. As he had done for years, he then pushed the memories into the back of his mind where he rarely went. Later, when he was alone, he would allow himself to feel; but for now, he was still in public, and had to be in control. His grief could wait.

Reopening his eyes, he saw that the Clan Mother was unashamedly staring at his face.

"You take the news well."

Her voice was neutral, but Haytham could feel an undercurrent of judgement that was as strong as a riptide.

"I have lost those dear to me before," he said quietly, not quite capable of caring what she thought, "Weeping and moaning has never done anything to bring them back."

The Clan Mother looked away, humming to herself thoughtfully.

"Do you know why she left you?" she asked, her voice truly free of emotion; not even the judgement was there anymore.

Haytham pressed his lips together, irritation bubbling in his gut and chasing away the melancholy that had subsumed him at the news of Ziio's death.

"No," he said, his voice tighter than he wanted it to be, "she chose to keep her reasons to herself. When she said that she did not wish to see me again, I respected that and stayed away."

Part of him would always regret that, he knew. Even before he knew she was dead, he sometimes found himself awake and staring at the ceiling, wishing for a particular warm body to be lying beside him. But the other part of him knew that if she had allowed herself to be swayed by his pleas that day, she would not be the woman he loved.

His wrists itched from the urge to unsheathe his blades in a nervous tick. Remembering that day was like prodding a rotting tooth just to remind yourself that it was there.

"I would not expect a man like you to respect a native woman's wishes."

Haytham very nearly did unsheathe his blades. As it was, all he did was look over his shoulder. Otetieni was back from the horses. His forearms were bandaged; what parts of his skin that did show were now shiny with the burn salve Haytham had brought and not from new skin.

"I am not most men," Haytham said, his voice frigid. He knew he was showing an unusual amount of emotion and couldn't bring himself to care. Only Johnson was here to see his loss of composure, and he was still tangled up with helping the natives hand out medicine and the blankets amongst themselves.

"Indeed you are not," the Clan Mother said, turning on her heel and beginning to walk away. She shot another warning look at Otetieni as she passed.

"Now follow me."

Otetieni's eyes widened comically.

"Clan Mother!" he said, sounding scandalized. Idly, Haytham wondered what precisely Otetieni thought the Clan Mother wanted; did he think that she wanted a taste of what had to have been her daughter's lover?

...If that was the case, Haytham would probably join Otetieni in being scandalized. He was starting to regret not bothering to learn a few simple phrases from Johnson.

The old woman's next words put those fears to rest while raising new questions.

"I've tried everything, Otetieni; if this does not work, then nothing will."

Her voice was as steady as the ground beneath her feet. Scowling, the man scrambled after her.

Haytham caught Johnson's eye as the crowd finally thinned around him and the horses. Jerking his head after Otetieni and the Clan Mother, he waited until his fellow Templar had extricated himself from a particularly curious native woman with a babe on her hip and made his way over to him before starting after the pair of natives.

"What does the Clan Mother want?" Johnson asked, his voice stained with envy. As good a relationship with the natives as he had, even taking a wife from their number, Haytham knew that he had had no luck in managing to talk to this particular tribe's Clan Mother.

"I'm not sure," he admitted in a low voice, "she simply asked me to follow her. Apparently there is something I deserve to know about."

Johnson was quiet for a moment as they followed the old woman and her warrior bodyguard past several rought lean-tos and campfires.

"Do you think it has something to do with The First Civilization?" he said, his voice oddly careful. "She could perhaps know that Kanieti:io showed you the site."

Haytham barely let the thought cross his mind before dismissing it.

"You recall how many hoops I had to jump through before she would show me anything," he said, "I highly doubt simply showing up with some medicine would be enough to be told more about the site."

Johnson considered his reasoning carefully before nodding slowly.

"I see your point," he said unnecessarily. "These people do tend to be very protective towards their holy sites."

They walked in silence until a half-built longhouse loomed in front of them. Only a third of the building was fully covered with sheets of bark; the rest was merely the bare bones and arches of the tribes' home, despite the workers that surrounded it. The Clan Mother and Otetieni slipped in-between the ribs of the building, waving aside the workers with small gestures. Following, Haytham and Johnson were lead to the completed section of the longhouse.

Embers glowed in the dimness. A firepit had been crudely dug into the ground, and already had a small pot sitting in it. Arranged near the fire were a few piles of blankets and hides, along with a bowl and spoon, both carved out of wood. 

With a small groan, the Clan Mother sat down by the bundle of furs and gestured at the two of them to sit down as well. Otetieni very deliberately did not join them. Instead, he stood behind the Clan Mother with his arms re-crossed, glaring at Haytham.

"Before we start," Haytham said, "might I ask as to what your relationships were to Ziio?"

The Clan Mother picked up a stick and stoked the fire before answering.

"She was my daughter, and Otetieni's little sister."

Haytham glanced over at Otetieni, who stood as still as a statue. The light from the embers set strange shadows dancing along his face. His actions made more sense now, in Haytham's mind. What brother would be pleased at the sudden appearance of his sister's lover? Especially when she was so recently deceased? He had never enjoyed it when his sister's suitors were invited over for dinner, certainly. More than once, he had ended up being scolded by his father for such pranks as putting his sister's guinea pig's droppings in the suitor's boots or pipe. Jenny hadn't minded though; she would sneak him a bit of dessert when he was sent to his room after chasing a particularly awful one off. She had never wanted to get married and be a good little wife like their father had wanted, arguing with him until the walls shook - 

Haytham mentally slapped himself and stomped the memories down. That part of his life was long done, and now was not the time to dwell on it.

The Clan Mother picked up the bowl and stirred it briefly with the spoon. Haytham saw a few small chunks of meat and vegetables in it, floating in a thin broth. It seemed that the old woman had been interrupted in the middle of her lunch; hopefully she would not hold it against them as they discussed whatever it was she wanted to talk about.

Turning, she pulled aside some of the blankets that were crumpled on the hides, revealing a small dirty face with empty eyes set into it. Familiar eyes, Ziio's eyes, set above a nose and mouth that he saw in the mirror every morning that he shaved.

A child.

He felt like someone had poisoned him with a paralyzing venom. Tearing his eyes away from his child's face, he looked at the Clan Mother. The look on her face was all the confirmation he needed.

He and Ziio had had a child together. And he hadn't known.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is part of a larger AU universe. I wrote this, was extremely proud and then realized that it didn't fit with the story. Anyways, rather than letting it languish in my thumb drive, I instead decided to publish it for everyone's enjoyment. Hopefully, there will be more in this universe to come.
> 
> Otetieni is my own invention, made purely to represent Connor's people and argue with Haytham.


End file.
